Library Blog » Research Data Curationhttps://libraries.ucsd.edu/blogs
Wed, 07 Dec 2016 19:14:55 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.3.6How open science helps researchers succeedhttp://libraries.ucsd.edu/blogs/blog/how-open-science-helps-researchers-succeed/
http://libraries.ucsd.edu/blogs/blog/how-open-science-helps-researchers-succeed/#commentsFri, 08 Jul 2016 21:44:49 +0000http://libraries.ucsd.edu/blogs/?p=5449Open access, open data, open source, and other open scholarship practices are growing in popularity and necessity. However, widespread adoption of these practices has not yet been achieved. One reason is that researchers are uncertain about how sharing their work will affect their careers. We review literature demonstrating that open research is associated with increases in citations, media attention, potential collaborators, job opportunities, and funding opportunities. These findings are evidence that open research practices bring significant benefits to researchers relative to more traditional closed practices. more

]]>http://libraries.ucsd.edu/blogs/blog/how-open-science-helps-researchers-succeed/feed/1Library Carpentry Workshops, July 18-22http://libraries.ucsd.edu/blogs/blog/july16workshops/
http://libraries.ucsd.edu/blogs/blog/july16workshops/#commentsFri, 08 Jul 2016 17:05:55 +0000http://libraries.ucsd.edu/blogs/?p=5443A free Library Carpentry workshop will be held in the Seuss Room in Geisel Library July 18-22 from 9:00 am – 12:30 pm. No coding experience is needed to take these lessons! Click here for details. This hands-on workshop will cover basic concepts and tools, including program design, version control, data management, and task automation. Participants will be encouraged to help one another and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems. The workshop is free but registration is required due to limited space of 50 participants. You may register for any or all days of the workshop.

Library Carpentry is part of the Carpentry movement, whose mission is to train researchers and librarians in the technological tools and computational skills needed in today’s research environment. Participants in the workshops can go on to become instructors, and can add lessons or improve current ones to better serve their specific discipline, thus building a dynamic and re-usable set of instructional material. Library Carpentry was initially a one-time event held in London, and there have been offshoots held in Australia, but this will be the very first Library Carpentry workshop held in the United States!

Do you use social media posts as a data source? The Library is piloting (through September 30, 2017) a subscription to Crimson Hexagon, a web-based library of social media posts (updated in real-time) and social media analysis software platform. Posts can be searched using keywords and then either downloaded for off-line analysis with third party tools or analyzed using Crimson Hexagon’s data visualizations.

Data sources include:

Twitter: Full Twitter Firehose (all public tweets) through a direct partnership with Twitter beginning July 2010. Twitter content via the Gardenhose from July 2009.

Tumblr: Full Tumblr Firehose through a direct partnership with Tumblr beginning January 2015.

Google Plus

Blogs, for example blogspot.com.

Forums, for example reddit.com and yahoo.com.

Facebook

Instagram Hashtags

Reviews: Product-based reviews from consumer sites such as tripadvisor.com and amazon.com.

Weibo*: As of September 1, 2015, currently unavailable due to the Chinese Government has forcing SINA to suspend all data leaving China through any and all data delivery vehicles pending an official policy regarding foreign use.

Library Databases and Search Tools

PubMed Essentials

This hands-on workshop focuses on what every user needs to know about PubMed, whether doing a search for a specific author or topic using keywords. Learn to focus your results with limits, become familiar with the features of the advanced search screen, and know how to use UC E-Links to easily get to full text articles.

SciFinder for Chemists and Non-Chemists

SciFinder is one of the core information resources for exploring the chemical literature, but it’s not just for chemists. It can also be helpful to researchers in engineering, environmental sciences, physics, and radiology and other health sciences.

This hands-on workshop will cover the SciFinder essentials: topic and author searching, improving your search results, accessing the full text articles, and how SciFinder compares with other databases like Web of Science. You’ll also learn to search CAS Registry to find chemical substance information, and get an introduction to the built-in editor for drawing chemical structures and reactions. Attendees must be affiliated with UC San Diego (students, faculty, staff, etc.) with a ucsd.edu email address.

PubMed: Beyond the Essentials

Move beyond the basics to refine and expand your searching skills. Learn about MeSH terms and how to use them in a search. Use MyNCBI and its numerous tools to keep you updated and to customize PubMed for your most frequent types of searches. Great for the frequent searcher.

And coming in March: PubMed Beyond the Essentials, Substance and Reaction Searching with SciFinder and Reaxys

Information Management Series

Managing Citations

This session will provide an introduction to a variety of tools for managing papers and citations including EndNote & EndNote Online, Zotero, Mendeley and will discuss how to choose the tool that’s right for you.

EndNote Online

The online version of EndNote is available for free. Come learn how to insert citations to your online library and then use them when writing a paper. Users of the desktop version can also synch their online and desktop library, so knowing how to use the online version extends the options.

Join the UC San Diego Library’s Research & Reference Advisory Services (Data Services) and the Research Data Curation programs for a two-day, intensive Software Carpentry workshop. Software Carpentry’s mission is to give scientists and engineers the tools they need to be more productive and efficient by teaching them basic lab skills for scientific computing. This hands-on workshop will cover basic concepts and tools, including program design in python, version control, data management, and task automation. Participants will be encouraged to collaborate and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems.

Event Location: Biomedical Library Building, BLB Events Room

Time: 9:00am – 5:00pm

There will be a $30 fee associated with this event. Participants must sign up for both days.

]]>http://libraries.ucsd.edu/blogs/blog/software-carpentry-workshop/feed/0Heavy Metal Bugs and Cigarettes: New Data Collectionshttp://libraries.ucsd.edu/blogs/blog/heavy-metal-bugs-and-cigarettes-new-data-collections/
http://libraries.ucsd.edu/blogs/blog/heavy-metal-bugs-and-cigarettes-new-data-collections/#commentsMon, 27 Jul 2015 22:06:15 +0000http://libraries.ucsd.edu/blogs/?p=3825Did you know that in 2008, the smoking prevalence among young adults in California declined to 13.4 ± 0.9 percent from the peak in 1999 of 18.8 percent? Or that African American young adults had the lowest current established smoking rate among all racial/ethnic groups? Now you can access all of these facts and more in the newly available California Tobacco Survey collection in the Library’s Digital Collections (http://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb5086895c). Not only are the reports available; the data itself is downloadable.

The surveys go beyond simple smoking statistics. They explore the impact of tobacco advertising, and investigate the behaviors and attitudes that impact tobacco use. In 1992, the largest percentage of teens aged 16-17 endorsed two to three “rebelliousness items.” And the largest percentage of teens who did much better than average in school also fell into the two to three rebelliousness item endorsement range! What are these mysterious rebelliousness items? (Hint: check out Table A4 in the 1992 Final Report http://library.ucsd.edu/dc/object/bb38582123)

In 1990, over 90% of both girls and boys rated “Girls controlling weight” as the number one health concern among California teens, well above “Dangers of drunk driving” and “Boys controlling weight.”

The smoking information comes from the ongoing California Tobacco Survey, a survey of California residents about smoking that takes place approximately every three years. The years 1992-2008 are now available in the Library’s Digital Collections, and contain not only reports, but the actual data, which can be downloaded and explored.

But what about the Heavy Metal Bugs? How rebellious are they?

I don’t know, but I CAN tell you that in 1967, Dr. Lanna Cheng found that the insect Halobates sericeus contained some chromium and copper. That bug has all kinds of metal!

The Heavy Metal Halobates collection was a serendipitous find that began with a Research Data Curation Program presentation at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. After our presentation, Dr. Cheng introduced herself, and asked if we might be interested in a set of data from the 1960-70s that were currently sitting on her shelf on a pile of old printer paper. The data provided were the result of a series of cruises whose research results included the first in-depth, at-sea studies of the only known ocean-living insect, a Nature cover, and one of the few, if only, records of heavy metals extant on the upper film of the Pacific Ocean from that time period.

Of course, we wanted heavy metal bug data! The Digital Library Development Program Reformatting Group scanned and converted the computer printouts of the data, to a useable digital format, along with the supporting documentation. Metadata was collected and the collection is now up in Digital Collections, here: http://library.ucsd.edu/dc/collection/bb8056206n

Both of these collections, as well as all of the research data collections currently in the Library Digital Collections, are accessible to anyone, even people outside of UC San Diego.

]]>http://libraries.ucsd.edu/blogs/blog/heavy-metal-bugs-and-cigarettes-new-data-collections/feed/0Got data:? Announcing the Beta launch of openICPSR – ICPSR’s Public Access Data Collectionhttp://libraries.ucsd.edu/blogs/blog/got-data-announcing-the-beta-launch-of-openicpsr-icpsrs-public-access-data-collection/
http://libraries.ucsd.edu/blogs/blog/got-data-announcing-the-beta-launch-of-openicpsr-icpsrs-public-access-data-collection/#commentsTue, 18 Mar 2014 18:25:25 +0000http://libraries.ucsd.edu/blogs/?p=1723ICPSR recently announced that openICPSR has launched in its Beta form for use by member institutions. The service is found at: www.openicpsr.org

openICPSR is a research data-sharing service for the social and behavioral sciences. Because depositors pay to deposit research data and documentation, the service allows the public to access research data at no charge. openICPSR assists researchers in meeting requirements for public access to federally funded research data. It ensures that data depositors fulfill public-access requirements of grant and contract RFPs.

openICPSR will run in beta form through June 2014. During the beta period, researchers at member institutions are welcome to self-deposit data and documentation free of charge. Beginning in July 2014, the service will open to the public and the fee for self-deposits will be $600 US per project.

Please note that professional curation deposits are not included in the openICPSR free offer. Researchers desiring professional curation with public access should contact ICPSR for a quote at deposit@icpsr.umich.edu or 734-647-2200.

openICPSR will continue to add functionality over the course of the next several months; however, self-deposits, when published, will indeed be available to the public, assigned a DOI, and cataloged. (One exception is the deposit of restricted-use data. These data will be accepted, assigned a DOI, and cataloged; however, restricted-use data will not be distributed until later in the year and then via our virtual data enclave (VDE) with a nominal charge to the data requester.)

The Digital Collections website contains more than 65,000 digital items that include documents, photographs, audio, video, and data sets that are unique to the UC San Diego Library.

Unique Digital Collections include the Baja California Collection, the Dr. Seuss Collection, the Missions of Alta California, the Spanish Civil War Collection, the Tuzin Archive for Melanesian Anthropology, and UC San Diego History.

We are in a test phase before replacing our current site: https://libraries.ucsd.edu/digital/ Help us by being a beta tester. We encourage you to use the “Help” menu of the site to report bugs or to submit any suggestions for improvement.

The new Digital Collections website incorporates responsive web design so you can browse the site on all your devices. Browse and discover the unique collections contained in our Digital Collections website at: Browse by Collection.